The Cattle of the Sun — Thrinacia (Island of the Sun) (Θρινακίη), landfall 12 of 15 on the voyage of odysseus
Homer's Odyssey, Book XII. The forbidden cattle of Helios. Traditional location: Sicily (Trinacria) — the fertile Plain of Catania, south of the Cyclopes' Etna coast.
Tiresias and Circe both warned: whatever happens, do not touch the cattle of Helios. Odysseus wants to sail past the island entirely, but the exhausted crew mutiny for one night's rest — and contrary winds pin them there a month, until the food runs out.
While Odysseus sleeps, Eurylochus persuades the starving men: better to die at sea than of hunger. They slaughter the sacred herd. The signs are immediate and horrible — the hides crawl, the meat lows on the spits. Helios demands justice from Zeus.
Six days they feast; on the seventh they sail, and Zeus' thunderbolt shatters the ship. Every man drowns except Odysseus, who lashes mast to keel and drifts — back through Charybdis itself — nine days, to Ogygia.
The forbidden herd
Tiresias warned; Circe warned; Odysseus, rounding the island, wants to sail straight past. Thrinacia pastures the cattle of Helios the Sun — seven herds of fifty, broad-browed, beautiful, immortal in number: they neither breed nor die, and the Sun sees everything that touches them.
The exhausted crew mutiny politely. Eurylochus speaks for them: it is evening, we are worn out, let us at least sleep ashore and sail at dawn. Odysseus yields — after binding every man by oath to touch no cow — and knows as he does that some god is planning harm. That night the storm begins, and the south wind blows for a month without stopping.
The oath breaks
A month pinned ashore. The provisions from Circe run out; the men fish with bent hooks and snare birds, and starve. Odysseus walks inland to pray for rescue, and the gods pour sleep over his eyes — the same fatal sleep as at Aeolia.
Eurylochus makes the starving men his speech: every death is hateful, but death by hunger is the most miserable of all — better to drown fat with the Sun's beef and pay the gods later. They drive off the finest cattle, wrap the thigh-bones in leaves for lack of barley, pour water for lack of wine, and sacrifice. Then the signs begin: the flayed hides crawl along the ground, and the meat lows on the spits, raw and roasted alike. They eat anyway, for six days.
“All deaths are hateful to wretched mortals, but the most pitiful is to die of hunger and so meet one's doom.” — Odyssey XII, 341–342
Counting the Sun's cattle: Seven herds of fifty — three hundred and fifty head that never breed and never die. Ancient readers already saw the calendar in it: roughly the days of the lunar year, the Sun's own property, which mortals consume at their peril. Aristotle records the reading. Thrinacia — 'three-cape island' — became Trinacria, still Sicily's emblem: the three-legged triskelion on her flag.
The bolt
Helios demands justice from Zeus — pay for my cattle, or I go down and shine among the dead. The moment the ship clears the island, a black cloud stands over it alone. The mast snaps and crushes the helmsman's skull; the bolt fills the hull with sulphur; the crew go overboard and bob around the ship like sea-crows until the wave takes them. Every man who ate is dead.
Odysseus — who did not eat — lashes the broken mast to the keel with the backstay and rides the wreckage. The wind swings south and drives him back to the strait: he passes under Charybdis as she swallows, leaps for the fig tree, and hangs there like a bat until she vomits his timbers back up. Nine days more on the planks. On the tenth night, the gods bring him to Ogygia.
The fleet after this landfall: 0 of 12 ships. Zeus' bolt takes the last ship and every remaining man. Odysseus alone survives, clinging to mast and keel.